Police across the Lower Mainland are bracing for possible retaliatory killings after the brazen public execution of longtime gangster Sandip (Dip) Duhre by someone he was meeting at the Sheraton Wall Centre Tuesday night.

They are looking at whether the targeted hit is linked to a series of tit-for-tat slayings between rival groups over the past 15 months that has left a trail of dead and wounded from Kelowna to downtown Vancouver.

Duhre, 36, a one-time associate of the late Bindy Johal, has been a marked man for years as he rose through the ranks of mid-level gangs in Metro Vancouver.

He was a regular at the posh Cafe One in the east lobby of the Sheraton and would routinely meet an associate who lives in the downtown Vancouver hotel-residential complex.

That associate was not present when Duhre met with two others at about 8:45 p.m. Tuesday. He asked to be seated in the most private corner. When one of the men went to the washroom, the other man opened fire, striking Duhre several times in the face.

“He knew who shot him — no question,” one police source said.

According to hotel guests, the unmasked shooter walked out a hotel entrance as panic ensued. Heavily armed Vancouver police arrived minutes later, locking down the hotel as an announcement was made telling guests to remain in their rooms.

Const. Lindsey Houghton called the attack “an unacceptable, brazen shooting that puts innocent people at risk.”

Houghton appealed to witnesses to come forward and said teams were continuing to search for clues.

“It’s very hard to prevent random acts of violence like this when we don’t know they’re going to occur,” he said.

Duhre’s death was predictable, say police and longtime friends.

Just last fall, Gang Task Force leader Supt. Tom McCluskie issued a public warning about brewing tensions between Duhre, his allies in the so-called Dhak group and United Nations gang and their loosely aligned opponents from the Independent Soldiers, Red Scorpions and Hells Angels.

Some in the latter group were linking the Duhre-Dhak side with the Kelowna shooting in August that left Scorpion Jonathan Bacon dead and wounded Angel Larry Amero and Soldier James Riach. Revenge shootings ensued.

“If Duhre’s identity is confirmed, this comes as no surprise,” McCluskie said Wednesday.

“We issued a warning just a few months ago saying anybody associating with, or hanging out with, or a family member of the Duhre or Dhak group are putting themselves in peril by just being near them. There is constant tension between the rival gangs and this is another example of where that tension leads to. It is inevitable.”

While several Dhak-Duhre associates were shot last fall after the Bacon slaying, the Duhre murder could be linked to more recent attacks.

The Vancouver Sun has learned that last weekend’s slaying of 21-year-old Ryan Saint-Ange in Abbotsford took place in a house owned by full-patch Hells Angel Michael Robatzek, suggesting the victim may not have been the intended target. The house is now up for sale.

And The Sun has learned that one of the victims of an attempted bombing of a motor­home near Whistler Monday was also a Hells Angel associate.

Longtime Duhre friend Ranj Dhaliwal, author of the Daaku novels about Indo-Canadian gangs, said he was saddened to learn of the slaying, even though it was inevitable given Duhre’s chosen life.

“Sandip Duhre was close to Bindy Johal in his younger years and understood the level of violence that comes along with the underworld. From what I saw, and a side most will never know about Sandip from his youth was that he liked to have fun — a joker that liked to pull pranks. He was intelligent,” Dhaliwal said.

“This goes to show all the youth thinking of living the underworld lifestyle that no matter how smart you are, you can’t outsmart a bullet. You live by the gun, you die by the gun. I write about this type of lifestyle and try to paint the most realistic picture I can, but the grim reality is right in front of us where gangland murders are now a common occurrence. When an old-school guy like Sandip gets killed, there is no question that there will be retaliation. He knew a lot of people throughout the years.”

A one-time ally of Abbotsford’s Bacon brothers, Duhre later turned against the trio of siblings. Police believe he had taken them under his wing when they began their criminal life.

Duhre and his two brothers, Balraj, 38, and Paul, 34, grew up in North Vancouver and were close to several Persian gang members as teens. Sandip, the middle brother later moved to Surrey, but was extremely active in the Abbotsford drug trade.

Both Sandip and Balraj have been shot at a number of times.

Balraj was hit in the face in a 2003 attack and survived. Sandip escaped injury when his car was sprayed with gunfire at a Surrey convenience store in May 2005, but his friend Dean Mohamed Elshamy was killed. Then in July of that year, as the brothers drove through east Vancouver in a bulletproof sedan loaned to them by a former Hells Angel, they were blasted again. The car saved them. In August 2005, Balraj was wounded when a masked gunman opened fire at an East Hastings restaurant.

After the August shooting, the Duhres’ devastated father Baldev, an author and court interpreter, told The Sun he tried to get his sons away from the violent gang life in B.C.

“They are at a stage where they want to change, but managing to do it is very hard,” the patriarch said. “They are at a stage where they want to walk away.”

Balraj moved to Ontario for a period to recover and his parents followed, although they still own properties in Surrey.

The parents were believed to be en route from Ontario Wednesday after learning of the fatal attack.

Sandip’s old friend Dhaliwal told The Sun that when he associated with the Duhres and others years ago, it was more about being together, acting tough, maybe getting into fights. It wasn’t about organized criminal activity, he said.

He only saw Duhre sporadically in recent years at family events and never asked him about his “business.”

Duhre had remarkably few convictions given his long gang history in B.C. In 1997, he faced conspiracy to obstruct justice charges with his two brothers, Johal, the Buttar brothers and several others. But the case later fell apart.

At the time of his death, he was on bail on charges of flight from police and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle. He was due to go to trial next fall.

He had firearms convictions that landed him in jail in 2005 and was a suspect in at least a pair of Vancouver murders, but had never been charged in them.

Last summer, gangster Aleksandar Radjenovic was handed an 18-year sentence for conspiring to kill Duhre and two others. Court records said Radjenovic had been hired by the Red Scorpion gang.

McCluskie called Tuesday’s shooting “as brazen an attack as we get here.”

The hotel was full of guests from around the world, including both the American and Cuban national women’s soccer teams.

“It is disgraceful,” McCluskie said. “All these people are put at risk when these public shootings happen. It is just a horrible, horrible thing.”

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